Love, Or Being Of A Wii Sports Fanfiction
by storyless
Summary: Too many Wii Tennis matches against Sarah and Elisa inspired this peek at Sarah's past and how she came to play with Elisa. Sarah/Elsa femslash, if you squint.


  
The first word Sarah learned in English was _hellohowareyou_.

Even now, when she can occasionally pass as a native speaker and knows very well that hellohowareyou, is in fact, four words, she still counts it as her first word because that's how she learned it. The missionary nuns --friendly, perpetually smiling white ladies who gave her raisin cookies would laugh as Sarah, breathless and sun-faced, chanted it to everyone she met, whenever she met them, for two weeks straight.

The second word Sarah learned in English was _tennis_.

One of the Sisters had brought a couple rackets and a can of tennis balls. They set up a makeshift court and drew the lines in the dirt. For a while, a ripped mosquito tent served as a net, until someone stole it in the night, after which there was no net. They'd play in the evenings when it was cool and Sarah (who wasn't even _Sarah_, yet) would watch, transfixed by the yellow ball which was so bright in the evening grey that she thought it might be glowing.

The third word Sarah learned was _racquet_.

One of the nuns handed Sarah hers and nodded to the court, where another Sister was smiling and miming a serve. Sarah simply did as she had seen the nuns do, night after night after night. Only she did it much better than she should have been able to, as a girl who'd barely left the village she was born in and could barely pronounce the name of the game. 'It was as though your body just accepted the racquet as a new limb, it came so naturally to you,' one of the Sisters was to tell her, sincerely albeit predictably, much later. It wasn't long before the brief evening tennis games stretched on well after nightfall, nor was it much later than that when Sarah was easily winning every match.

After a while the Sister who had brought the racquets and balls told Sarah's family about her friend-with-connections way down in Johannesburg who wanted to fly Sarah down so he could see her play. Her family consented; poor and rural as they were, they were forward-thinking and wished the best for her. Her father had been to South Africa as a young man and knew it was the best place in Africa for his daughter to be. Still, her mother wept like a funeral-goer on the day she left. Sarah didn't come home until seven years later.

She took on the Christian name of Sarah and learned to play on clay hardcourts. Not surprisingly, the man-with-connections was impressed. He introduced her to _his_ friends-with-connections who were also impressed enough to introduced her to _their_ friends-with-connections, and so on and so forth until she was offered a sponsorship.

Eventually, her talent took her across the Atlantic, to America where she met a woman named Elisa.

The fourth word Sarah learned was _love_.

The Sisters always said it at the beginning of a match and before a team had scored, and because Sarah was a quick learner, she soon learned what it meant. It meant _nothing_.

Elisa is better than she will ever be. Those quick, fierce, low-going topspins that too often get past Sarah almost never get past Elisa, who returns them with smart, sharp and confident swings, often lunging over half the court to reach them in time. Sarah never really learned how to do those kind of lunges --she's too slow, too trained by her past and learning to play in short tennis skirts she was made to wear in her days of playing through the ranks in Africa.

They wear pants on Elisa's court, and Sarah is glad for this. She always felt awkward and wrong seeing her strong, long, athletic legs coming from those tiny tennis skirts. Sarah ends a volley in their favor --she always volleys well, and she tries to ignore the proud smile on Elisa's face that she can't help but see in her peripheral vision.

Still, she feels that _thing_ flaring and fluttering again somewhere lower than her stomach, and again she is left wondering if love means nothing after all. 


End file.
